Rock Long
by infiniteviking
Summary: While investigating a landslide near Konoha, Team Kakashi and Team Gai discover a stranger claiming to be the long lost father of Rock Lee. Post hiatus. Gen, with mystery, friendship, and high adventure. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

Though this story is set after the two-year hiatus, there are none but minor spoilers. I certainly don't own _Naruto_, because if I did, we'd see way more of a certain team...

**

Rock Long

Part I

**

Konoha, the Village of the Hidden Leaf, was cradled inside a deep forest, shielded from the eyes of any but the most elite of ninjas. A short distance from its walls rushed a river -- so narrow and violent a stream that it had never been used for shipping or even as a landmark. Only the shinobi, the ninjas of the Hidden Village, knew where the river ran... and where, in a series of channels undercutting a great limestone hill, it tore throats in the earth and sank out of human sight.

The day after the landslide that changed the shape of the hill forever, seven ninjas, with a snapping sound like displaced air, appeared on a wide slab of earth in a delta of the river.

The adults of the group were easy to pick out. Hatake Kakashi, the man of a thousand techniques, slouching lazily with his forehead protector drooping over one eye and a dark mask covering the lower half of his face; Maito Gai, the proud green beast of the Hidden Leaf, surveying the terrain with hands on hips, as though daring the cliffs to try anything funny. The five rookies, Gai's three and Kakashi's two, took positions on either side, staring up at the rubble littering the broken hill.

Uzumaki Naruto, the blonde fireball who was Konoha's premier troublemaker, broke the silence first.

"Whoa. That must have been some earthquake! Why didn't we hear about this when it happened?"

"Idiot!" Sakura, his pink-haired teammate, swatted him on the head. "Only you could sleep through something like this! It woke me up in the middle of the night and shook one of my perfume bottles off the table--"

"Is that why you stink this morning? Ow!"

"Everyone put your equipment on," interrupted Kakashi, rubbing his brow. He usually let his students work the rants out of their systems before leaving Konoha, but this morning he'd arrived at the meeting point almost on time.

"Yes, Sensei!" The five rookies broke up their packs, distributing the spelunking equipment about their persons: spikes, pitons, ropes, gloves and special climbing boots -- to the chagrin of Rock Lee, who had to take off his ever-present ankle weights before his boots would fit. They then checked their batteries by flashing their head- and wrist-lamps in one anothers' faces.

For once, the teachers let them play. It was so easy to forget that rookie shinobi were children too. Kakashi's students, at fifteen, were barely a year younger than Gai's.

"Come on!" shouted Lee. "I'll race you over the edge! See who slips first! It'll be great training!"

His forward momentum was halted by a hand locked into the back of his shirt. Chagrined, he looked back, meeting his teacher's stern eyes.

Gai glanced from Lee to his other two recruits, Neji and Tenten. They'd all blossomed in the four years he'd been their leader, though only Lee had taken it as far as adopting his sensei's signature bowl-cut and bright green jumpsuit; but their enthusiasm, especially Neji's, could always use a little work.

"I have a better idea," announced Gai, fixing each with a challenging stare -- and then grinning widely. "_I'll_ race you over the edge! Last one in the cave does extra laps around Konoha when we get back!" And he was off in a cloud of dust, with Lee, whooping in delight, a close second.

Neji and Tenten glanced at one another: first resigned, then calculating, and then they were both gone. After all, there was extra training at stake.

"He does motivate them, I'll give him that," sighed Kakashi, running a hand through his spiky gray hair. This was just another instance where his teaching methods differed from Gai's. His recruits would never fall for such blatant manipulation.

Well... Naruto might. As a matter of fact...

Kakashi's hand shot out just in time to grab Naruto as he ran past.

"What?" yelled the boy, tugging furiously at his trapped arm. "Fuzzy-brows and the others are already over! If there's any trouble, they'll run into it first!"

"Naruto!" Sakura slapped him again, and Kakashi rolled his eyes as he shook a cobweb out of his helmet.

"We're doing this safely, Naruto," he said mildly. "And if you put a toe out of line, you're carrying everyone's gear."

"Awww, Sensei!"

Kakashi smiled under his mask. After all, what was wrong with a little motivation?

**.o0o.**

"Wow!" shouted Naruto -- and was instantly muffled by Sakura and Kakashi. For a moment, everyone cringed; but the distant echoes of Naruto's voice gradually died away, and the ceiling didn't collapse on them after all.

Looking around, though, Kakashi had to admit that the kid had a point.

The caverns were massive; the first one could easily have contained Konoha's town square. Stalactites dripped in hundreds from the crags above, some joining stalagmites to form giant pillars from roof to floor. The roof itself was split down the middle, raining sunlight down on colorful sedimentary formations. The walls were caked, here and there, by dazzling crystals.

"This is amazing!" Naruto had lowered his voice to a loud stage whisper. "How could something like this have been hidden all this time?"

"Before the landslide," said Kakashi, "the entire cliff face was solid stone. There was only one way in: the small cracks in the base, where the river rushed under the mountain. The water was so fierce that nothing going in that way could ever come out."

"So anything that the river brought in..." Sakura's hushed voice was horrified.

Kakashi nodded. "Was trapped here forever."

"You mean," said Naruto, his eyes huge, "we might find... _bodies_?"

"I don't want to find bodies!" wailed Sakura. Kakashi shook his head in despair, relieved that the chamber was solid enough to endure the presence of his rookies.

"We're only here to map the caverns," he said. "Such a well-hidden hideaway, so near our village, would be a perfect place for invaders to camp."

"So we set up traps!" said Naruto brightly. "I've got lots of traps! I've got a trap I made myself--"

"If it's the hot-sauce one, I don't want to hear about it," Sakura grumbled. "Bad enough there might be _anything_ in these dark holes--"

Tenten, the pretty dark-headed weapons specialist, dropped suddenly from a ledge into their midst, startling Sakura so badly that she shrieked.

"Oh, sorry!" exclaimed Tenten, though she didn't look sorry at all. "Everyone's up ahead, Kakashi-sensei. We found someone living in here!"

**.o0o.**

"Behind this wall," said Gai, slapping a hand against a solid flow of stone. "It's very thin here -- a few good blows would break it -- but Neji sees somebody there."

Neji nodded curtly; the activation of _Byakugan_, his bloodline-limit talent, had set a network of veins pulsing around his white eyes. He raised his head and looked straight through the wall. "It's a small chamber connected to the main caves on the other side of the river. The man in there looks sick, but he's alive."

A thin, timid tapping sounded from beyond the wall. The sound, barely audible over the rushing river, sent shivers up their spines.

"I can break it, Sensei!" said Lee excitedly, bouncing in place.

"Not a wise idea." Kakashi stared up at the ceiling, his stance seeming entirely unconcerned; but his visible eye shifted shrewdly from one key area to another. "One wrong strike could bring the whole cavern down. Hold on..." He moved carefully to the left, running his hands over the cracks left by the earthquake.

"The wall is actually thicker there," Neji remarked.

"No." Kakashi slid his hands up the wall, framing a two-foot space, just shoulder-high. "This is the only good option."

"But Sensei!" protested Naruto. "Neji says the wall is thinner over here! Why do you have to go over there where the wall is thick? Come on, you never tell me anything. Sensei, I _said_--"

Ignoring the predictable outburst, Kakashi clasped his hands together, forming the meditative seals that were the inevitable preliminary to a _ninjutsu_ technique. Energy flowed through his arms, and he pressed his fingers against the stone, forcing microscopic cracks to lengthen and expand until a section of the wall shivered and collapsed into sand.

He should have expected Naruto's awed "Wow!" in the background.

The split ceiling extended into this cavern as well; dim sunlight filtered in through a tangle of rubble and roots. The falling sand had kicked up other particles, drawing a brief curtain of haze across the new opening. Ducking his head, his sensitive fingers feeling for traps, Kakashi slipped through the roiling cloud. He sensed the others crowding in behind him -- and froze, one arm extended in warning, as a croaking voice sounded nearby.

"Not so bright!"

Kakashi flicked his light up, then quickly lowered it. The image, though, remained in his head: an old, hunched man, cringing away from the unexpected glare.

"Lights down," Kakashi said softly. "We've come to get you out, sir. How long have you been here?"

A moment of silence. The stranger's weak voice was barely audible. "Fifteen years. Why have you come here? So many people have never come here at once. The few that have are mostly dead... or dreams, just dreams..."

The dust was falling swiftly, and Kakashi realized that the cave's entire right wall was missing, opening to a vast hollow space beyond the ever-present river. A fine mist was laced through the cool, damp air. The stranger, visibly shivering, stepped hesitantly toward them, searching their faces with a kind of anguished appeal.

"Ninjas... you are ninjas. From Konoha?"

Kakashi motioned the rookies forward. There was no telling what condition the man's mind might be in, after fifteen years alone in a cave. "Let us help you. We have a medic--"

"You." The man stopped abruptly, gaping in astonishment, looking straight past Kakashi, past Naruto and Neji, past Sakura and Tenten and Gai--

"I know you," he rasped. "Lee? That cannot be you--"

Rock Lee stepped back, his mouth dropping open. "What?"

The stranger tottered toward them, his hands stretched out, as if searching his way through heavy fog. "You look the same as... My Lee, all grown up, it can't be--"

Gai, lightning-fast, barred his path. "Hold it! You can't just -- what do you want with my student?"

"Let me go!" The man struggled feebly, striking out at random. His technique, or lack thereof, settled another question: it was clear that he had never learned to fight.

Finally he subsided, falling once more into a series of hacking coughs. He came up with one finger stabbing straight ahead, and asked of the room at large, "_Is that boy called Rock Lee_?"

"Who are you?" demanded Gai.

The man looked helplessly from one rookie to the next, clutching Gai's restraining arm as though it were the only thing holding him up. His lips moved silently, processing the question. Then he turned back to Lee, and words failed him.

Finally he whispered:

"My name... my name is Rock Long."

-----


	2. Chapter 2

**Part II**

The new cavern was about thirty-five feet square, bordered on one side by the river, with several passages leading off among the crannied limestone. It bore the appearance of a wilderness camp, except for the fact that it was fifty feet underground.

A hollow area had been carved out of the far wall. The skins of fish and mammals had been stretched over broken stalagmites and sealed to the wall with mud, forming a crude tent against the damp air. Homemade spears were stacked beside it. A rough basket, apparently made of reeds, contained a grass rope and several stone knives, along with a chunk of granite and a flint, a miracle that had made possible the firepit in the center of the cave. The net lying beside the river had been woven of animal sinews.

As for Rock Long... he was a mockery of a man, withered and twisted, lank and shaking and racked by a hacking cough. His hair, for all he had attempted to tie it back, fell in matted twists over his face, which was thin enough to approach the grotesque. Dressed in rags that barely covered him, hunched over and pale as the stone, he was still younger than he'd seemed at first glance.

"Hold on!" protested Naruto. "Hold on, hold on -- there's no way Fuzzy-brows is your kid. You don't have any eyebrows at all!"

"I can sort of see a resemblance," mused Tenten. "But only if I squint and put my head like this--"

Neji, having determined that nothing about the situation required his talents, rolled his eyes and turned away. But Lee, whose round eyes had grown even rounder, stepped forward, hoping nobody noticed his knees shaking.

"Let me help you, sir."

He took the man's arm. Between them, Gai and Lee steered Rock Long over to a rock. There was a strange, distant expression in Long's eyes, as though he was only half aware of what was happening to him. Lee, stepping back with Gai's hand on his shoulder, was no less bewildered.

Sakura had been staring from Lee to Long and back again, trying to reconcile the conflicting images. Now her medical training came to the fore.

"Kakashi-sensei?" she said quietly. "Do you think I should examine him? I've never seen a case like this. Starvation and prolonged exposure... his diet couldn't have been adequate... I don't know how he's alive. And the moisture in here isn't helping. We have to warm him up."

"Warm?" Long cackled, waving a hand at the empty firepit. "I am warm! Whenever I catch some wood..."

Without warning, Gai swung around on his students.

"Well? What are you all standing around for? It's time to put your youthful swiftness to good use! I want a fire going in two minutes! Now, my eternal rival--" turning back to Kakashi as Lee, Neji, and Tenten attempted to break the sound barrier -- "are you telling me you came all the way out here without a spare outfit? That's 740 to 739, then... I win!"

Kakashi closed his eyes in dismay. He knew what was coming.

With a flourish, ignoring Sakura's appalled stare and Naruto's ironic smirk, Gai whipped a pristine green jumpsuit out of his pack.

"Only the best for Lee-kun's family! It will keep you warmer and drier than anything you have ever worn. And if you decide you prefer a hermit's existence, don't worry -- it'll last forever!"

"That's a good idea, Gai-sensei!" said Sakura, catching Kakashi's resigned nod. Better a fashion disaster than pneumonia. "Here, sir, you shouldn't be wearing those unhealthy rags..."

"No, no!" Long clutched the remnants about him. "These are mine... and as long as you might turn out to be a dream... you understand..."

"But sir--"

"No!" The castaway scrambled back, kicking wildly. Through sheer luck, he landed a blow on Sakura's leg. She fell back with a yelp.

"Leave it for now," whispered Kakashi. "Don't agitate him. As long as he's not worse when we reach Konoha..."

"Don't worry," grumbled Sakura, rubbing her shin. "I think he'll make it."

**.o0o.**

There was no lack of firewood outside. Within one minute, Neji and Lee had stripped the neighboring trees of dry limbs. Tenten, a knife in each hand, danced among the falling branches, slicing them into manageable increments before they could hit the ground.

When a massive dead tree crashed down right in front of the cave, she decided it was time to draw the line.

"Enough, Lee! We'll never get that back in two minutes!"

The dust cleared, revealing Lee, his chest heaving with adrenaline, standing at the base of the splintered trunk. He looked happy and frightened and eager and sick, like a man with vertigo learning to walk on air.

"Come get your sticks, Lee!" called Tenten, tying a rope harness onto the third bundle. Neji was already hoisting one onto his shoulders.

"Do you think that man really is Lee's father?" Tenten whispered.

Neji shrugged. Always uncomfortable with emotional matters, he leaped lightly over the ledge and disappeared into the catacombs.

As Lee picked up his bundle of wood, Tenten lingered for a moment, pretending to retie her rope. Coming to a sudden decision, she grinned and gave her teammate Gai-sensei's characteristic thumbs-up. "I'm happy for you, Lee-kun."

With a shaky smile, Lee turned, adjusted his burden, and shot into the cave.

**.o0o.**

"This," said Long quietly, "is where she rests."

Gai, staring down at the mud-encrusted cairn built into the base of the wall, raised his brows. "Well, Kakashi, it's a good thing you made your door over there instead of here."

"Our raft was broken on the rocks." Long's voice was clearer now, as though telling his story had strengthened his grip on reality. "The water sucked us under, and brought us to this place. It hurt her... she died a few weeks after we washed up in this cavern. By then I knew I could never escape. We had tried so hard to have a better life... My only hope was that our son was safe."

Kakashi glanced over at Gai, who said reluctantly:

"Lee."

"My Lee..." Long's face twisted up in an unaccustomed smile; he seemed oblivious to Gai's pained expression. "We threw our baby to shore. He was so young -- just under a year. We were certain that the river would kill us, but it wouldn't have our child.

"After that I... went mad, I think. I remembered to mark the days--" The wall beside the grave was scored with hundreds of check marks; a sharpened stone lay on a ledge beneath the rude calendar. "But I thought that everyone outside was as dead as I was. When the ceiling opened, I didn't even try to find a way up."

A rush of sparks drew their attention to the firepit. Gai's students had returned in record time. Tenten was adding tinder, and Lee, his face contorted, blew furiously at the small blaze. As they fed the fire, trimming it to prevent excess smoke, Sakura beckoned Long over to the medicines she'd taken from her pack. Long hung back, suspicious; but Lee smiled encouragingly and even gave him the thumbs-up sign. Nobody was surprised when Long retreated to his tent and insisted on applying the treatments himself.

The instant he was out of sight, the five rookies crowded around their teachers, all talking at once.

"Quiet!" roared Kakashi, barely getting the word in before Gai. "These developments have obviously cut the operation short. We'll be returning to Konoha as soon as... Long-san... is able to walk. Chart the caves we've seen so far, and report back in two hours."

"Neji and Tenten can search the back caverns," Gai suggested, "if Naruto and Sakura search the front. Lee..."

"Please let him stay," cried Long, emerging from his tent. "Can't I talk to him? He looks just like his mother..."

The other students hesitated, but Lee, looking to Gai for confirmation, nodded fractionally, and they raced out into the maze.

"I'll search the rock-shelves," said Kakashi, "if you think you can get across the river."

"Hah! I can probably get across the river faster than you," retorted Gai, but the customary challenge was almost perfunctory. He whispered something in Lee's ear. The boy saluted -- "Yes, Sensei!" -- and walked quickly over to the firepit as Gai and Kakashi shot off in different directions.

And then it was just Long and Lee, the gray, hunched man and the straight-backed boy, staring at one another with no idea how to continue.

Finally Lee spoke, taking refuge in formality.

"Sir... you are..."

"It's true, Lee," replied Rock Long. "They told you?"

Lee nodded. He blinked, struggling to marshal his thoughts. "Gai-sensei said... I mean, we'd like to take you back to Konoha. I've been assigned to confirm your history here. And--" he paused, struggling for words. "I'd like to know about you, sir. Who you are -- what happened to you. I, I never knew anything about my family..."

"You'll listen, Lee?" Long lifted one hand, trembling, his voice pleading. "You won't disappear, like the others? You'll stay and talk with me?"

"All right--" Lee gulped, then found his voice. "F-Father."

**.o0o.**

Across the river, Gai lounged against a stone, his narrow eyes locked on his student. Kakashi, appearing beside him, took in the fixed grin, the minute trembling of the shoulders, and sighed.

"Breathe, Gai."

"I am breathing," said Gai stiffly. It was bad, then -- any other time the green-clad ninja would have overreacted, made a joke out of it, anything but this stoic silence.

"I'm surprised at you." Kakashi pitched his voice low, so that it couldn't be heard across the river. "You've taught many students... more than I have. Did you think he'd never grow away from you?"

"That has nothing to do with it!" There, now, was a spark of the old impatient Gai. "Every child grows up. I just hoped he'd be able to find his own way, not... Stop laughing!"

Kakashi looked at Lee, in his Gai-style haircut and Gai-style uniform. There was an uncharacteristic hesitance in the boy's movements as he bent to hear the man called Rock Long, an awkwardness Lee had never shown around anyone else. And Kakashi looked back at Gai's clenched fists and the turmoil in his eyes, and shut up fast.

"A young rookie did find Lee near the river," Gai whispered. "Only a few months old, wrapped in a blanket with a chakra seal to scare away the predators. Do you know who watched over him as a child? No one. Another ninja orphan -- there are too many." _Like you_, he didn't say, _and like me. Like your old pupil Sasuke, like Neji and Naruto, born to lose what they should have held dear_. "All he had was his dream. All he had was his heart, and he followed it until it broke. All this?" He shrugged his green shoulders, adjusted the helmet over his shiny black hair, grinned an incandescent, shattered grin. "This is only the outside. He won't need these crutches forever. But that man doesn't know him."

"What does it matter?" asked Kakashi bluntly. "The boy is a ninja. Unless your training..."

"There's nothing wrong with my training," snapped Gai. "You and your new-age attitudes! I wanted Lee to grow up and find his _own_ way. Not... be drawn off by some feeling of obligation to a total stranger."

"And if this is really his father?" Kakashi persisted. "You think it will be too hard for him?"

Gai smiled sadly. "It shouldn't be. I know Lee better than that. But there are so many ways for this to go wrong."

"Sensei!" It was Naruto, vibrating with suppressed energy. Kakashi tried ignoring the exuberant rookie -- _grownups in conference here, go away_ -- but Naruto only bounced right in front of him and waved his hands. "Sensei! Kakashi-sensei! Sensei, listen! What's the matter, how come you never listen to me? I know you're busy and everything, and it's probably important or you wouldn't be spying on Lee and his papa from all the way over here, and it looks okay to me but what do I know, and you never said we're not allowed to bother you, and we're supposed to tell you if we find--"

"WHAT IS IT, NARUTO?"

"Sensei, we found BONES!"

**.o0o.**

The nurses had spoken, many years ago, of the rookie who found the child named Rock Lee during a routine patrol near the river. Lee had wondered, for a while, who had abandoned him and why. Then the ninja academy had given him a purpose, and all the old questions had turned tail and slunk away.

He felt terrible now. To assume the worst for all these years, while his father sickened in a stone prison, ever so close to home... There was no way he could have known, but the nay-sayer in Lee's mind nagged that he could at least have _looked_.

He stood at respectful attention, his thoughts racing, scarcely understanding as Long rambled onward. The man had spoken for thirty minutes, mostly about fish and the layout of the cave. By this time Gai-sensei would have noticed Lee's distraction and swatted him one to restore his focus.

He risked a glance across the river. If the two teachers were still there, they couldn't be seen through the gloom. It wouldn't take long to explore the place, though, and then they could bring Long-san home and sort everything out.

_Don't worry_, he wanted to say, but didn't dare interrupt. _When we get back to Konoha, the Hokage-sama can look after you. She fixed my back; I'm sure she can bring you back to full health. Gai-sensei and I, we'll look after you..._

"Lee," whispered Long, now shrewd and confiding, "I didn't want to speak of it, not with so many people around, but I saved some other things from the river. You should see them. They were yours once, your inheritance. I saved them for you."

"Thank you, sir -- I don't know what to say." Lee looked again toward the river. "Should I call Gai-sensei?"

"No!" cried Long, stepping backwards into one of the tunnels. "I saved them for _you_, not for the others. It isn't far. We'll be back in minutes. Come and see!"

Lee flashed his wrist-lamp at the river, but nobody was around. The shuffling sound of Long's bare feet paused, then receded. Lee stood on the threshold, gripped by indecision. Then, curiosity winning him over, he followed the old man into the maze.

-----


	3. Chapter 3

**Part III**

"Tenten found them. She _screamed_!"

"I did not! That was Naruto!"

"They must have been here for years. This is a granite outcropping -- the limestone never spread this far."

"But... Long-san was here. What kind of barbarian would leave somebody's bones just lying here like this?"

"He didn't know about them." Kakashi waved the students back, peering down at the crumbled remains. "He's never been here at all. The dust is too thick."

"But how could he have been here for so long," said Gai, "and never tried this passage?"

"I don't know."

"There's something else." Neji's pose was nonchalant, as usual, but a slight furrow between his white eyes bespoke a serious problem. "I looked into the grave of Long's wife," he said softly. "I used _Byakugan_. It's just a pile of rocks. Nobody was buried there at all."

Gai and Kakashi exchanged a grim glance. Then, as one, the six ninjas took off for Long's cavern.

Seen through skepticism's magnifying lens, the scene was very slightly off, minor details taking on new, sinister significance. The floor was rough, not worn as it should have been after years of habitation. The sinewy net was poorly cured -- it would never have held a fish. The firepit could not have been used before the earthquake cracked the cavern roof: there was nowhere for the smoke to go.

"Look at these marks--" Kakashi touched the top of Long's calendar, tracing the depth of the lines. "They're all freshly scraped; the water hasn't worn them down. They were all made within the last few days--"

Tenten was examining the flint and the stone knives. "These were cut by a saw!" she cried. "But they're badly made, and Long never used them -- they would have ripped his hands to shreds."

"Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto had upended the rude basket, and was pulling something out of the bottom -- a newspaper that had been used to line it. "This is last week's, and it's never been wet -- there's no way it could have gotten down here by itself!"

Slapping a fist into her hand, Sakura summed it up: "Then old Long is a total liar?"

"I knew it!" shouted Gai. "I knew all along that that miserable shrimp couldn't be related to my precious student!"

"Wait, wait!" Naruto waved a wild hand at the cleft Kakashi had cut in the stone. "We had to break the whole wall down! How did he get in before us?"

Outside, the clouds shifted, and light -- literally -- dawned. As one, the six ninjas looked up at the ceiling: the wide, cracked ceiling, with an open space just wide enough for a man on a rope to slip through.

And there was Lee's pack, abandoned on the ground next to Long's firepit.

"Neji," said Gai, his voice cracking. "Where are they?"

Clasping his hands in the ritual seal, Neji opened his white eyes.

"_Byakugan_!"

**.o0o.**

The aperture was utterly dark. Aware of Long's hand at his back, Lee squinted into the cavern, realizing as his eyes adjusted that the ceiling's crack had tapered off a few hundred meters behind them.

He switched his wrist-lamp back on and aimed it around the space. The cave was a small, natural one, tapering down to the ground and completely closed off.

"I don't see anything--"

The subtle change in the air was just enough to alert him. His reaction, completely instinctive, spun him out of the way, further into the cul-de-sac, and he flashed the light up into Long's face.

The older man was blocking the entrance, one hand raised to ward off the light. His other hand had recoiled to his side -- wielding a thick stalagmite like a club.

Lee, skidding back into the wall, felt a pang of shock and betrayal.

"Why--?"

Long laughed: a cold, ugly sound. He had cast his weakness aside; his movements were smooth and powerful, though still untrained.

"You fell for it, you little fool!" He made no effort to hide his voice; the water roared and they were deep in the maze. "These caverns are dangerous -- in a minute you're going to have a tragic accident. After that, your friends will treat me as a grieving comrade, not a suspicious stranger. They won't even investigate until we get back to the village, and then it'll be too late!"

"The village?" Long was a spy, then... a spy on a mission of mayhem, exactly the type of thing Gai-sensei and Kakashi-sensei had come here to prevent. But how could anyone threaten his own flesh and blood?

One look at Long's eyes settled that question. They glinted with a seething hatred, shallow, careless, and unequivocal.

"Then... then you're not my father," said Lee, the words coming easier than he'd imagined.

"Of course not -- stupid shinobi brat!" Long cackled, sidling carefully into the chamber like a malevolent crab. "I never heard of you before I took this mission. The poor, abandoned baby, his past such a convenient blank. But I did my research, you see. I know everything about you. I know you cannot perform _ninjutsu_ -- you're dependant upon hand-to-hand techniques. You should be easy to kill."

_I know everything about you_. Only one man had ever said those words to Lee and meant them.

"Not everything..."

"What?"

"I said _not everything_!" Lee's back was straight again, his right hand outstretched in a mocking, beckoning gesture, the light still shining into Long's squinting eyes. The boy's voice rang sharply in the hollow space. "I won't even need my forbidden techniques to defeat you. You don't know everything. You have no idea what it means to be a ninja of Konoha!"

Long's eyes bulged with amazement. For a moment, in a macabre trick of the light, he really did look like Rock Lee.

And Lee, with the stupendous, hard-earned speed that had made him a legend among his peers, flickered... and vanished.

**.o0o.**

The crash echoed through the cavern. The subsequent high-pitched cry, and the blows that followed, came so fast that they were almost impossible to separate from one another.

Led by Neji and Gai, the two teams sprinted across the unstable ground, hurtling from rock to perilous rock. The river, splitting and merging among the fused pillars, raged below them. Once Neji faltered, his sense of perspective muddled by the dark and the labyrinth and the ability to see through stone; Kakashi caught him as he fought for balance.

The chase brought them to a cold cavern deep under the hill. The river had split the floor in two, and passages led off in several directions. The ceiling was whole here, but a beam of light shone from one of the clefts, as though from a lamp abandoned on the floor. Dust, kicked up by some titanic struggle, floated in the yellow glare.

"Lee-kun!" shouted Sakura. "Are you all right?"

"Neji?" said Gai hoarsely. "No, don't tell me, I have to see..."

He raced for the opening, but stopped so short that Kakashi nearly ran him over.

Lee had stepped out into the cave. His hard hat was tilted over one ear and his clothes were streaked with grime. His hands were bare -- scraped raw, as usual, from heavy training -- but he was grinning: a hard-edged, angry grin that gave nothing away.

"He seems all right," whispered Kakashi.

"Shh! Of course he's all right. He's my student! Lee-kun..." Gai's voice steadied. "Where is that... that fiend of an imposter?"

"This one?"

Reaching back into the cleft, Lee pulled an amorphous form out after him. Long was cocooned, from head to foot, in the bandages Lee usually wore to protect his hands. The man's eyes were wild with anger, but his mouth was tied shut.

"Hey--" Naruto pointed at Long, once again exercising his fatal talent for stating the obvious. "You tied him up! You had us worried for nothing!"

"The Hokage-sama can question him later," said Lee, "but right now I don't want to hear him talk. Sakura-san!" The pink-haired girl stepped forward, and Lee flipped a sealed leather pouch into her hands. "I found this in his pocket -- that's why he didn't want to take off his rags--"

"This--" Sakura's voice rose sharply. "This is poison! I recognize the seal from my medic lessons. Even a few grains could sicken an entire community!"

"And he couldn't have been lowered into the cave without help," mused Kakashi, "or set up his camp alone before we got here. But some of those props were prepared months in advance. So how could they know--?"

"Unless," exclaimed Gai, "they _created_ the earthquake!"

"You FIEND!" shrieked Sakura. "You broke my perfume! Do you have ANY idea--"

Kakashi nodded, absently snagging the back of Sakura's jumper to prevent her from mauling the prisoner. "That makes it a conspiracy. We should get a few more teams out here... these caves are too wide to sweep by ourselves. I wonder what they'll find, eh?"

"Yeah!" yelled Naruto, grinning impudently into Long's face. "Had enough yet, loser? Konoha is too smart for you!"

Kakashi, yanking him back by his collar, briefly considered knocking his students' heads together, but abandoned the idea as unproductive. Instead, he pulled them close and whispered into their ears, "I think you two should get back to Tenten's cavern and cover over that poor dead body."

"Awww, Sensei!"

Lee, surrounded again by his team, looked back at the man he had captured single-handedly and found his satisfaction melting away. The bright, tenuous possibilities of the last half-hour had left a strange sadness in their wake, and now, with the crisis resolved, adrenaline and anger quietly called in their bills.

"Gai-sensei..." He shivered and hung his head, looked again at Long -- fiction, phantom, once more only a stranger -- and could think of nothing to say but the obvious. "He's a liar; he's not my father after all. I'm sorry, I... I shouldn't have been fooled."

"Oh, Lee, don't say that." Gai broke into the confident, infectious smile that was his trademark, and Lee couldn't help returning it, because the best thing about Gai-sensei was that he never said a word that didn't come straight from the heart. "The important thing is that you weren't fooled for long! The springtime of our lives is the best time to make mistakes: that's when we're still strong enough to correct them. Lee, I'm... so proud of you..."

Lee's eyes began to water. He had always cried easily -- at least at times like this. Hesitantly, he raised his hand, and Gai gripped it tightly.

"Th-- thank you, Gai-sensei."

Then the boy flung his arms around his teacher's neck.

Beyond them, the turbulent river flung a sheet of spray high into the air, its pearly droplets glistening as though suspended in free-fall, proving once again that nature has a fabulous sense of drama. The impression lasted all of a second and a half... after which the entire party was drenched.

And thanks to the bandages, the only one who wasn't completely dry by the time they got back to Konoha--

--was the man who had never been Rock Long.

-----


End file.
